Poetry Says

This week I’m attempting to answer a listener question: How do I get into poetry?

Poems in this week’s episode:

• Stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost
• One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
• Burning Sappho by Gwen Harwood
• Lucky by Dorothy Porter
• praise song by Nate Marshall

Bonus poems (if you’ve got other ideas for starter poems, let me know!):

• We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
• The Lyrebird by David Brooks
• My Country by Dorothea McKellar
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
• Growing a Bear by Hannah Gamble

You can find plenty of qualified peeps ready to guide you into poetry on Coursera, edX, Poetry Foundation, iTunesU (check out Open Yale Courses to start with) and YouTube (here’s a great lecture on Eliot’s The Wasteland).

Finally, have a browse through some of the Aussie journals publishing exciting new poems today like Cordite, Verity La and Meanjin.

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This week I got to talk with Lisa Brockwell about three poems that play with the theme of ‘the girl in the poet and the poet in the girl’. We also cover why it’s important to keep reading even when the poems go quiet, the question of poetry ‘scenes’ and, importantly, HBO’s Looking.

This week’s poems:

• Glamourie by Kathleen Jamie fromher book The Overhaul, published by Picador.
• Caesarea by Dorothy Porter from The Bee Hut, published by Black Inc.
• Ode to snow falling on the YWCA, Kemplay Road from Lisa’s new book Earth Girls, published by Pitt Street Poetry.

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This week I make a case for the short WWI poem Adelstrop by Edward Thomas. Then things get a little experimental as I try to answer the question: How does this poem operate in 2016? (Mild spoilers towards the end for Helen Macdonald’s beautiful memoir H is for Hawk.) 

If you’re keen to go deeper into this type of poetry you can find the free lectures I’m talking about at Open Yale Courses. (Langdon Hammer is the charming English literature professor you never had.)

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You might already know Robbie Coburn as co-host of the fantastic Australian Poetry Podcast (a must listen for AusPo fans).

Today Robbie tells us his own story, from his first publication in Pi O’s Unusual Work to his recent appearance in Poetry magazine. The poem we dive into this week is High Windows by Phillip Larkin, followed by a sneak peak of Robbie’s forthcoming book, The Other Flesh.

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In today’s bumper episode I get to have an in-depth chat with Queensland-based poet Stuart Barnes. We cover how he came to poetry through none other than Tasmanian poet Gwen Harwood, then dive into Sylvia Plath’s poem Ariel. We also talk about the art of the remix poem, how to write a cento, and the upcoming launch of Stu’s first book, Glasshouses, out from University of Queensland Press.  

In this episode:

• Gwen Harwood
• Ariel by Sylvia Plath
• The Rabbit Catcher by Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and the remix by Stu and previous guest Michele Seminara
• Stu’s cento Tenons
• The Queensland Poetry Festival

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